This beautiful Facebook post about sacrificing for your child has gone viral
This beautiful Facebook post about sacrificing for your child has gone viral
Bunmi Laditan is a mom. She’s a mom who loves her children with all of her heart, but she also really, really loves her alone time after they’ve gone to bed.
In a recent Facebook post that has gone viral, Laditan wrote about one night in particular where all she wanted to do was spend time doing what SHE wanted, but instead sacrificed her alone time for the sake of her child.
And her words are beautiful and so relatable for parents everywhere.
Night time is my time. While the days are for work, cleaning, and errands, once the last child breathes heavily and...
Posted by Bunmi Laditan on Wednesday, September 14, 2016
“Night time is my time,” she wrote. “While the days are for work, cleaning, and errands, once the last child breathes heavily and steadily in their bed, I come alive in a new way. Silence descends upon my home and I’m free to do whatever I’d like.”
She goes on to say that an hour after she tucked everyone in, she heard her three-year-old son wail. He was sweaty, really upset and really awake. She tried all the usual tricks to calm him down and get him back to sleep.
“Nothing worked and I felt that familiar frustration rising,” she explained. “I didn’t want to be here, in his room, battling with the most difficult version of him. I wanted to lie down, read, watch Netflix, or eat something I shouldn’t. I deserved it. I only had an hour or so left before I’d fall prey to the sleep that’s always behind my eyes. And what if he wakes the others? The only thing worse than one awake child past their bedtime is three in the same predicament.
Her first instinct was to rush through it — to try and get him back to sleep as quickly as possible. Because Netflix and relaxation time was waiting in the other room. But she knew it was one of those things that can’t be rushed.
“Children feel when you’re impatient and so they deliberately, infuriatingly, slow down,” she wrote. “They can sense when you’re in two places at once and will use every weapon in their arsenal to bring you to the present moment.”
She knew that her son simply needed her to sit by his bed and hold his hand until he fell asleep, so leaving her other intentions for the night behind, that’s exactly what she did.
“I relaxed into the thin rug on the wood floor and surrendered, not to him or his needs, but to what the moment needed of me,” she explained. “I needed to be there and I knew it. There was no escaping this, no convincing, bribing, or threatening my way out of it. The parenting books and experienced grandmas might say different, but I could feel in my bones where I needed to be: here.”
And it worked. He fell asleep with his mom by his side.
“People pay good money to learn what children teach for free: how to stop fighting against what is and see it,” she added. “That doesn’t mean you say yes to everything, but to effectively change something, you first have to know it by fully experiencing it no matter how uncomfortable that may be. Sometimes you have to sit.”
What a beautiful life lesson we’re so grateful she shared.
The post This beautiful Facebook post about sacrificing for your child has gone viral appeared first on HelloGiggles.
